Modernising on-board electronics doesn’t need to cost the earth

Upgrading and improving your on-board networks doesn’t need to be a highly expensive job. Sure, if you’re removing all existing instruments and replacing them all with brand new NMEA 2000 ones, it’s going to cost a lot, especially if you are replacing big ticket items like engines. However, if your legacy NMEA 0183 and analogue equipment works perfectly well, then the question to ask is “Do I NEED to replace these at all?”  

We’ve seen hundreds of similar such scenarios, where boaters have a mix of NMEA 2000, analogue, and NMEA 0183 devices on-board, and want everything communicating together harmoniously. The good news is that this can be done, relatively easily, so long as you have a little bit of knowledge on wiring and NMEA connectivity.  

Let’s look at a few of these scenarios in turn…

Scenario #1 
You have an NMEA 0183 GPS, and you want to get the data from this onto your NMEA 2000 display. This is nice and easy, and you’ll only need one NGX-1-ISO to do this! Wire in the NGX-1 to the Tx (Talker) connections on the GPS, plug the NMEA 2000 M12 connector into a T-Piece on the backbone of your N2K network, and the device will convert from 0183 to 2000, outputting the GPS data for your display to receive.  

This is a much cheaper and more flexible option than removing your NMEA 0183 GPS and replacing it with a brand new NMEA 2000 one.  

Scenario #2 
You have multiple NMEA 0183 instruments and you want all of the data on your NMEA 2000 network. Again, this one is nice and easy, by using a PRO-NDC-1E2K. The same principle applies as before; connect the output (Tx) from each NMEA 0183 instrument into each input port on the 1E2K, and connect the M12 NMEA 2000 port to a T-Piece on the NMEA 2000 network. The device will multiplex all instrument data together, and output it onto the N2K network. Specific data filtering can be applied if necessary, but I won’t go into that here.  

Once again, providing a much cheaper solution than replacing all existing NMEA 0183 equipment with new NMEA 2000 devices.  

Scenario #3 
You have two analogue diesel engines on the boat, Port and Stbd, and you want to have visibility of parameters such as oil temp, engine temp, oil pressure, RPM etc. on your NMEA 2000 display. Depending on how many parameters you want to monitor from each engine, this can be done with one EMU-1 or two. As the device has 6 gauge inputs, 4 alarm inputs and 2 tacho inputs, you could monitor up to 3 gauge parameters on each engine, saving even more money.  

In the scenario where two engines are connected to one EMU-1, just ensure that the EMU-1 is sharing the same supply and ground as the engines, as the EMU-1 does everything referenced to voltage. If two EMU-1’s are used, where one is dedicated to each engine, then the EMU-1 must share the same supply as the engine it is connected up to.  

The great thing about the EMU-1 and the intelligence it has, is that it allows for the analogue gauges to be removed if you want to, saving real estate, which can be a challenge on smaller vessels. The EMU-1 can operate as an analogue to NMEA 2000 device, with gauges present, or without and it will work directly off the engine senders. *(Please note, the EMU-1 does not work directly connected to 4-20 or 0-20mA senders, it is a resistive input). 

There are lots of other scenarios where our products can be used to convert, digitise and share your vessel data, and these are just a couple of examples. We have an exciting new product coming this year as well, which will allow for even more configuration and flexibility with analogue to digital conversions, but that’s a secret for now! All we will say is this;  

Imagine being able to convert any type of analogue input into NMEA 2000 messages, giving you full visibility of your data, at a very low cost, without having to use slow and clunky configuration methods like text commands or old PC based interfaces.